Quent Cordair Fine Art

Well, resuming work on the foot proved to be simpler than I had thought, though it did require some time to match up all the colors and paint over a few minor areas that needed slight adjustments. In the end, the experience was enormously instructive, and the foot ended up looking just fine.

I proceeded, as planned, with the remainder of the figure. First I painted the right arm, and then the left leg. It is becoming obvious at this point that the constant focus on painting flesh tones is paying off. What several months ago would have represented several days worth of work took one, admittedly long, work day.

Of the elements of the composition for which I had scrap taken myself, the wreath was the last to be painted. While it allowed for a little more wiggle room in the color/proportional details department, it also required a lot more concentration and looking back and forth from canvas to scrap. The reason is that faces, hands, etc. are familiar enough forms that it is easier to hold their details in my head, and easier to tell if they look right on the canvas. I painted the wreath in one long session, but by the end not only was my hand sore, but I was completely brain-fried. Still, I am quite happy with the way it turned out, and very excited to begin work on the torch!

Over the past few days I’ve been concentrating on the drapery in the ‘Liberty’ composition. Because of the pose, the figure in this painting is considerably smaller than in either of the others, even though the canvas for ‘Poet ‘is the same size and the one for ‘Gift’ is slightly smaller. So it makes a good starting point for warming up on any given phase of painting. All three figures are wearing a simple, white gown draped with a silk throw to add some movement and color to the compositions. I’ve painted so many white shirts now that work on the gown is really straight forward. But so far, the throw has been a lot of fun to work on. It has a really nice, almost metallic sheen to it, and a lovely fade from white to gold to a warm brown – both of which make for tricky but rewarding color challenges. I’m working with three color strings: a neutral string, a yellow/gold string and a brown/orange string and moving from right to left to keep my hand out of the wet paint.

With all the drapery finished in this painting, I am tantalizingly close to finishing it – especially since the background is going to be so simple. The temptation is to keep plugging away until it is done, but for now, the plan is to paint the right leg, then the right arm, and then the left leg…and then set it aside while I work on the drapery in the other two compositions…
…which is exactly what I started to do. I began working on the leg today. Unfortunately, several hours in the power went out due to a wind storm taking out a transformer somewhere nearby, and I am stranded in the middle of the right foot.

Not only is the light from the skylight and windows in the studio a little too sketchy due to the passing cloud cover, but all of my reference material is digital and my lovely scrap-monitor currently about as useful as a model that has called in sick. This is a far from ideal state to leave the foot in overnight, as most of the flesh tones will me either super tacky or completely dry be morning. But on the bright side, it will provide an opportunity to practice seaming two sections of skin together…which will come in handy next time I paint a section that is too large to complete in one sitting.

Progress on the three paintings is moving ahead, and I think I’d better get my little commentary here caught up before it falls even further behind.

The first painting to get any actual paint-action was ‘Liberty’. The second was ‘The Poet’. But the third, ‘Gift’, is where I will begin since by the time I got around to working on that one, I had the presence of mind to snap a few photos of the process rather than simply of the progress at various stages.

Each day’s work begins with mixing colors. Currently, my preferred method, particularly for flesh-tones, is to mix color ‘strings’. I start with a string of neutral grays-colors which have value (light, dark), but no hue (red, green, blue etc.) or chroma (color intensity). Titanium white goes at one end, a ‘black’ mixed from Ivory Black, Burnt Umber and Raw Umber (Ivory Black is actually quite blue straight out of the tube) goes on the other. From those two I mix a middle value dividing the range in half. Between the mid-point and white I mix a mid-point and so on until I have nine values. Next I mix a string of nine ‘Yellows’. These are yellowish in hue, as high in chroma as the earth-tones they are mixed from will allow (Raw Umber, Yellow Ochre and Titanium white), and correspond more or less to the values of the neutral string. There is a string of ‘Oranges’ next mixed from Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna and Titanium White and finally a ‘Red’ string of Venetian Red and Titanium White.

From these strings I can mix any specific color I need on the fly. First I decide on the hue and the value. For example, a typical flesh tone might be between value 7 and 8 (1 being black and 9 being white) and somewhere between the yellow and orange strings. I mix a little of the 7 and 8 values from those two strings. Finally I can decrease the chroma (flesh tones are typically low in chroma) without changing the value by adding a little 7 and 8 from the neutral string. It sounds complicated, but it is incredibly simple compared to mixing an exact color straight from tube colors.

Here is a typical palette for flesh tones. Below the color strings are some mixed colors for the nose area in the next few images.

Once the paint is mixed, I can dive right in. This time I started with the nose. I am thinking about the curve of the shape away from me in space as I go, and keeping in mind that the value will decrease as that form turns away from the light source. The brightest values are reserved for the few areas of highlight.

It looks pretty weird at first huh? But the further it progresses, the more it begins to make sense visually.

That’s when it gets to be a lot of fun…and also when things speed up considerably. The more visual reference there is on the canvas, the easier it becomes to make hue-value-chroma decisions. And I can always go back into an area and punch up the contrast or raise or lower chroma etc. When I really get into it, I suffer from a pretty extreme sort of time dilation. Six hours can disappear in a blink. Eight in two blinks. And suddenly the face is finished. I’m including two images here. The first is much clearer, a little more accurate contrast-wise, and was taken with my ‘real’ camera. The second was taken with my phone and has a little better color saturation.

At this point I may as well include images of the other two paintings at about the same stage. Here is ‘Liberty’ after the first session painting flesh-tones:

And here are two images of ‘Gift’. The first was taken after the first day of work. It’s a good start, but has some serious issues, particularly with the structure of the nose. This is mostly due to problems with the initial drawing. The flesh tones dry fast, however, and two days later, after two four-hour touch-up sessions, most of the problems are resolved. The real beauty of the color-string method of mixing colors is the ease with which I can match colors in subsequent painting sessions. It makes touch-ups and alterations like this much faster.

You will have noticed that the hair is also finished in the above photo. That brings me to the next step.

The key to painting hair is to think of it as one large form curving in space rather than a bunch of strands. It has to look like it has a nice round head underneath. Again working with a palette of color strings, I started by blocking in some of the major areas and shapes in the light-side of the hair.

Then, in the well lit areas, I painted gradations of color following the curve of the overall form of the hair as it turned away from the light source, again keeping the brightest values for the areas of highlight. Afterword, I cut in details with darker tones to add shadow and separate sections of hair, and lighter tones for individual, lit strands. Eventually, the whole thing takes shape:

I had a little extra time after finishing the hair, so I chopped in the beginnings of the gown as well. In fact, I did that with all three paintings. Here are a couple images of ‘Liberty’ with the hair first in progress, and then finished with the beginnings of the robes:

And, just for fun, here is an image of all three canvasses at this stage of completion:

With that wordy post, I am just about as caught up as possible. Questions and comments are, of course, welcome.

Recently I was able to move into a new, much larger studio space. Among the myriad perks and benefits associated with the relocation is the amount of room I now have to work on multiple paintings at the same time. There are many reasons why this is something I’ve always wanted to be able to do.

First: as I work for several days on one particular element of a painting, flesh tones for example, I get into a sort-of rhythm and am able to work not only more quickly, but more accurately as I go along. So, if I were working on several paintings, and could tackle all of the flesh tones in one big push, I should be able to finish all of it faster and do a better job. The same would hold for fabric, wood, sky, etc.

Second: after a hundred hours or more of work on the same painting, it isn’t uncommon to lose a certain amount of enthusiasm for the thing. When that happens, I often find I am able to paint better after a little break and with some distance and fresh eyes. Multiple projects would allow an opportunity to take just such a break from one painting while I turn my attention to another for a while.

Third: It is always easier (and safer) to work on an area of a painting if the surrounding, finished areas are dry to the touch. Occasionally a technique requires multiple layers of color in one area allowing each to dry before applying the next. Some colors dry much slower than others. If I had several canvases in progress, I could set one aside to dry and still make productive use of my limited work time.

Fourth: An art studio always looks super-cool when it is filled with works in progress.

So now I have a chance to put all of this to the test, and all of you can see how it all turns out. I will be working on three separate paintings in this installment of the Artist’s Studio, each with a slightly different approach with respect to composition. Each painting features the same model, and fairly similar costume, but the poses and themes will vary. In another slight break from my usual practice here in the Artist’s Studio, I am just now starting these paintings…so with the exception of the first two or three steps, each post here will represent the latest work on the group. Hopefully this allows me to comment more immediately on my thought process and on technical issues, since it will all be fresh in my mind. I also hope this will encourage a few more questions and comments as I go along. Additionally, I will be coordinating these posts with updates to the RationalArt blog on my own website, the only difference being that I will try to keep long, in-depth technical discussions that will mostly be of use only to other painters on the other site so we can focus more on thematic, aesthetic, and compositional conversation here.
My intention is to update regularly and often.

So let’s get started!

As always, I like to begin my paintings with a very accurate and detailed drawing. I work from photographic reference material, usually several different shots of the model and a varying number of images for the background depending on its complexity. So the first eight to twenty plus hours of work on each painting is spent carefully drawing out the composition on paper.

The first of the three compositions is actually the only one I had well worked out in my head when I hired the model. It is also the simplest in that it will have no background elements at all. Instead, much as a sculptor would, I will rely on the pose, body language, costume and a couple of simple, held props to convey the subject. Unlike a sculptor, I am restricted to one vantage point for the viewer, but I get complete control over lighting, and I get a full color palette to work with. The subject is a take on ‘Liberty’. As is classically the case, Liberty is a female figure in simple drapery, holding aloft a torch. My figure is leading, stepping forward into light from darkness, and carrying a crown of laurel leaves to symbolize the victory of liberty over oppression (rather than standing on broken chains). I will have plenty of time to elaborate on the pose etc. in later posts. For now, here is the scale drawing of ‘Liberty’ ready to be transferred to its primed and waiting 18” X 30” canvas:

As long as I had the model in the studio, the lighting set up and an empty memory card in my camera, I shot a lot of different poses. For some, like the one in this second composition, I had an idea for a subject, but hadn’t really worked out the pose. I thought a painting of a poet working out a verse would be a great subject for exploring the themes of creativity, thought and beauty. Other than that general idea, I had a composition book that I liked the look of and a pencil. After several dozen variations on poses and subtle costume adjustments, I came up with a composition that I really liked. The Poet in this painting is a female figure, again in simple drapery (very decade/style non-specific…intentionally so), leaning against a wooden stool with her notebook in one hand and her pencil in the other poised to write. Her gaze is directed away in thought. Unlike the ‘Liberty’ composition, the ‘Poet’ will have a background, though it will serve to add more in the way of mood and comment on my architectural preferences than it will add to the overall theme. Except of course that my preference in architecture says a lot about what I think is beautiful and creative…which could affect a viewer’s interpretation of the nature of the poet’s writing. I have painted a lot of open skies and highest spires of skyscrapers outside windows. Obviously I love that sort of setting. To mix it up this time the light outside will be the more dramatic light of early morning or evening. I’m pretty excited about this one. Here is the scale drawing for ‘The Poet’ ready to be transferred to its 18” X 30” canvas:
(Incidentally, the titles of all three of these paintings are still completely up in the air. These are all working titles)

The third painting is different from the other two in that it has its beginnings in the simple fact that I thought this pose was really nice. So, it will serve a much simpler thematic purpose, that of depicting beauty. A more complex theme or the addition of background elements may evolve as I work on the piece. Every once in a while I come up with a finished painting that I really love when working this way…and it’s a lot of fun. It’s much more of an experiment than a plan. Call it Research and Development. This will likely be the composition I end up working on if I need a break from the other two. I will tentatively be referring to this one as ‘The Gift’, since her gesture sort of evokes reaching out to receive something or let something go. This title will almost certainly change. Here is the ready-to-transfer drawing for ‘The Gift’ (16”X26”):

Finally, in the interest of catching this entire Studio adventure up with the current state of these three paintings, here are images of the three canvasses with the drawings meticulously transferred onto them and ready for paint:

For anyone that is interested, I used a process called an oil transfer to get these drawings from paper to canvas. This basically involves making a large format photocopy to blow the drawing up to the full size of the canvas (I was drawing on 18X24 inch paper, and the canvasses are 18X30 and 16X32), and then applying a very thin, even layer of burnt umber oil paint to the back of the photocopy creating an archaically sound and giant version of the same transfer-paper technology used in a checkbook…if any of you kids remember checkbooks. The canvasses are linen, sized with rabbit skin glue, primed with oil and then toned with an oil color wash. Again, if you want the down-and-dirty, nitty-gritty details of the transfer process, drop me a comment on the RationalArt Blog once I get this step posted there. Any other question or comments are very welcome here in the Artist’s Studio.

The final step in completing the painting was painting the stepped, marble wall on which Icarus is landing. This was actually really fun. I had no reference material whatsoever, but was able to fuss around with the stone until it looked enough like marble that I was satisfied. ‘Study for the Triumph of Icarus’ was finished.

As much as I love the way this little piece turned out, it more importantly accomplished its primary purposes. I was able to work out many of the challenges associated with the design and painting of the wings and discovered a few issues that will need to be address before attempting the larger multiple figure composition (way better to catch them now than a month into a huge canvas). I am also more excited than ever to get moving on the larger painting, though it may still be some time before I am actually putting paint down.

As always, thanks for visiting the Artist’s Studio. Please feel free to share any comments or questions.